Many men and women use razors to superficially remove (i.e. trim) unwanted hair. Some women use razors to shave their legs, to remove hair from their armpits, etc. Some men use razors to shave their faces, their scalps, their chests, etc. Razors typically utilize “blades” to cut unwanted hairs. The blades of a razor cut hairs as a user pulls the razor across his/her skin at the location to be shaved.
Users of manual multi-bladed razors, e.g. the kind with a handle and a blade assembly, typically apply a lubricant to their skin prior to shaving to minimize the friction between the blades and their skin, and to thereby minimize the frequency and/or severity of unwanted cuts, and/or other types of collateral damage, to their skin that can result from one or more blades cutting their skin and/or bumps or other imperfections on the surface of their skin instead of, or in addition to, the hairs to be cut.
During the process of shaving with a manual multi-bladed razor, some of the cut hairs and lubricant may be pushed into the gaps between and around the blades. The presence of this hair and lubricant mixture blocks the gaps between the blades and must be removed to prevent fragments of cut hairs from interfering with and/or blocking the appropriate contact between those blades and a shaver's skin. It must also be removed so that a path exists through which newly scraped hairs and lubricant can escape so as to prevent the razor from effectively “pushing” an aggregate of lubricant across the surface of the user's skin and obstructing the user's view of the skin to be shaved.
While a completely soluble shaving lubricant would help ameliorate the flushing of surplus lubricant from between a razor's blade, most, if not all, shaving lubricants are not completely, and some are not even easily, dissolved in water. In fact, in order to increase their lubricating effectiveness, many shaving lubricants are formulated with hydrophobic ingredients that make them difficult to dissolve in, and/or to remove with, water.
Not only is it often necessary for a shaver to attempt to force the hairs and lubricant from between a cartridge's blades through the sustained application of a very energetic stream of water, many shaver's feel compelled to “bang” their razors against a hard surface (e.g. their sink countertop) in an attempt to physically dislodge the debris from between the blades. Other users sometimes attempt to clear such debris by sliding a finger nail between the blades often with undesirable consequences.
Removing “used” lubricant and cut hairs from between the blades of a twin-bladed or multi-bladed razor is a difficult and frustrating process. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to generate enough water volume, speed and/or force in the water discharged from the tap of a bathroom sink, such that the kinetic energy of the water successfully remove the debris stuck between a razor's blades.
A user of a manual razor possessing a typical blade assembly will usually hold the cartridge (via its attached handle) under water running from a tap in order to attempt to “flush” accumulated lubricant, hair, and debris, from between the cartridge's blades. This is an ineffective and frustrating process. And, only a relatively small “slice” of a stream of water impacting an unmodified blade assembly will actually impinge upon and/or pass between the blades